Electronic devices, such as pagers, often incorporate communication between different semiconductor devices. In many electronic devices, the communication between semiconductor components involves data transference between a master device, which controls the communication process, and a slave device, which responds to commands from the master device. In this manner, the tasks necessary to the operation of the electronic device may be shared by the master device and the slave device, thereby providing for the faster execution of the necessary tasks.
In conventional pagers, a microcomputer, employed as a master device, may be interactively coupled to one or more slave devices, e.g., a support chip or another microcomputer, to perform such operations as decoding incoming messages and monitoring internal pager parameters, e.g., battery voltage. During normal operation of the pager, the master device typically communicates with a slave device to either read or modify information stored within registers internal to the slave device.
The microcomputer in a pager may, for example, read the contents of a register to determine whether a message has been received by the pager. In response to reception of a message, the microcomputer may provide modified information to the slave device directing it to transmit a signal to an alert mechanism, whereby an audible or tactile alert is generated.
In many cases, communication between the microcomputer and the slave device must be completed very rapidly, as when messages are being decoded. If the communication cannot be completed within a predetermined amount of time at a normal rate of data transfer, the microcomputer increases the rate of transfer to ensure the completion of the communication between the devices. For example, in many conventional pagers, a predetermined amount of time exists in which the pager is able to recover a message included in a selective call signal. If the message is not completely recovered within this predetermined amount of time, the message could be erroneously decoded or possibly be lost entirely by the pager. In one conventional pager, depending upon factors such as type or length of message, decoding the message could require from 138 to 416 operations involving data transference between the microcomputer and the slave device. In each case, the microcomputer internal to the pager will adjust the rate of transfer to complete the required operations within the predetermined amount of time. However, increasing the speed at which data is transferred requires a higher consumption of current by the microcomputer, thereby decreasing the life of a battery providing power to the pager. From a user standpoint, any decrease in the battery life of the pager is very undesirable.
Thus, what is needed is a rapid method of data transference between semiconductor devices that does not increase the power consumption of the pager.